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I just can't get over how low the scores were on that test. Like seriously. Our school just made Physics an elective because they can't afford to pay two teachers. So now there are only three required science classes, yet they still force you to take senior academic english, which a seventh grader would have no problems passing. Wtf is wrong with this country. This is really bad.

I had only three required science courses in high school, as well as only three required history courses of my choice.

English and math were the only courses I was required to take all four years. I took AP English to keep it interesting though. Instead of reading Romeo and Juliet or other dumb stories we read stuff like The Hobbit, Frankenstein, The Great Gatsby, The Jungle, Brave New World, and The Stranger. Regular English classes stuck to stuff like Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.

Our AP English Literature class was the opposite. There's a list of novels for that course and the other English classes didn't have to stick to it. It's not a bad list, by all means. Every class was required to do one Shakespeare play though. The local university put on Hamlet the same semester though so that was really fun.

Frankenstein is probably the best thing I've read in a literature course.

I actually had two different English teachers assign Frankenstein (hated my 8th grade teacher though since she decided to read the whole thing out-loud and was super slow about it, and skipped over words she couldn't pronounce). It's a pretty good monster story, I'm hoping to read through Dracula this summer since it's a free e-book.

Yeah, it's a favorite of English teachers. With good reason. If you're interested in literary criticism, the Norton edition of Frankenstein (1818 version) has some amazing essays. Actually, which edition did you read?

I don't really consider Frankenstein a monster story - or rather, it's such an oversimplification of what I think is one of the best works in the English language. Mary Shelley is kind of my hero.

You know, I'm not really sure which edition I read. It was most likely the 1831 one.

I can understand that; I just call it a monster story due to having a focus of an 'inhuman' character which was really rare at the time. I kinda wish 'monster' didn't have such a negative connotation about it.

I'm reading on average one or two books a year now :/ I used to read a lot more back in middle and high school because I always got my work done early but was never allowed to leave the classroom so I used to read until the bell rang.

Oh I really recommend the 1818 text if you ever are in the mood to pick the story up again. The changes are significant, and I think ultimately detracted from the story.

And yeah, I tend to call him the creature or Adam (which never appears in the novel outright, but Shelley would refer to him as that in her talks and letters).

You're in college already? It can be quite the killer for reading, yeah. At the start of a semester I'll be going strong, reading someone once a week for maybe five weeks and then nothing. Gotta get back into the habit. Although my biggest issue is finding stuff I actually enjoy reading. Should probably start going for more nonfiction.

Yeah, this is the end of my second year, I'm actually tranferring to a different school though, I want to move back in with my mom since I don't want her to be all alone. My brother is going to an out-of-state university next year and my dad recently moved out.

Alberta requires full English, full Social Studies, 2 years of either Bio, Chem or Physics, 2 years of math, two technical electives, a year of phys ed, and 2 30 level courses of either a second language, or a fine arts program. Of course, everything can be done to the 30 level, and most students take their sciences and math to the 30 level. Not bad for 3 years of high school.

I have no idea what the level 30 stuff means, but i'll assume it's the same as level 4 here in Australia. We have to do compulsory English, science for 2 years, visual arts for 2 years, french for half, Indonesian for half and then we pick one to do for another year, we have to do maths for 3 years (picking the difficulty in the third) and I can't remember the rest (I need to sleeeeeeeeep)